


It's Okay to Cry in Here

by entre_nous



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Arkham Asylum, Doctor/Patient, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, F/F, Mental Instability, Therapy, pammy cusses sometimes when she's drugged up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 23:36:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6214643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entre_nous/pseuds/entre_nous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Harley is still in the role of a psychiatrist, and has her second therapy session with Pam since being hired at Arkham Asylum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Okay to Cry in Here

Outside of this facility, she was a force to be reckoned with. Pamela Isley had been a doctor before. She was intelligent, and beautiful in a wild sort of way. A woman who had been wronged.

Harleen refused to be intimidated by her. She tried to approach her as another woman, with her own set of problems. Not a meta-human with enough power to rip the building to shreds. Inside here, before these sessions, Pamela was injected with a small dose of a drug potent enough to tame her powers.

Their first time together, Harleen was genuinely worried that she would be torn apart, maybe with Ivy’s bare hands, if she had asked the wrong question. However, Pamela proved to be more aloof than anything. She was not pleased to be in Arkham Asylum…no one was. But she was calmer than most.

She didn’t snap.

She didn’t threaten.

She only grimaced every now and then and gave extremely short answers.

“Our last session, I wanted to get to know you as a…civilian. This time I’m going to ask more personal questions.” Harleen almost asked if that would be okay, but had to establish herself as the person of authority in this room, however hard that may have been. She tried not to take too much premature pity on Pamela before she knew her story.

Only a pair of bright green eyes came up in acknowledgement. And then she waited patiently with her hands in her lap. If she moved too much, the guards would handcuff her, just as a ‘precaution’, as they liked to say. Harleen once again felt sorry for her, but tried to bury it quickly. Every last ounce of freedom was stripped away from the patient’s here. It seemed a bit…much.

“I noticed that your skin has an unnatural coloring to it. How did that happen?”

Plenty of responses came to Pamela’s mind, but she only grinned tightly and then laughed coldly, “Lab accident.”

Harleen did that thing that most psychiatrists did that just made Pamela and everyone else want to snap. She sat there and looked into her eyes, at her, examining Pamela as if looking for more things to point out that were _different_ about her. Rarely did Pamela feel insecure about the discoloration of her skin. But a beautiful blond woman asking her about it so sternly made her feel…ugly.

“Would you mind elaborating on that? You were a doctor…” Harleen started it for her, from what she already knew.

“Yes. A botanist. Ironically enough.” Again, with the brief answers. A little more time, and suddenly the deep, dark voice spoke again, “I wish I could change that.”

“Being a botanist?” Harleen asked.

Raising her eyebrows, she was avoiding eye contact with Harleen even as she spoke, “I wish I had taken a different path, now. I hope you don’t believe in fate.”

Pamela’s piercing green eyes met with her own blue ones again, imploring her, which made Harleen immediately shake her head, “No, I suppose I don’t.”

“Good. Nothing else like that? No superstitions at all?”

The blond woman only shook her head to confirm that no, she didn’t. Though she wasn’t entirely sure that was true, she knew it would give Pamela peace of mind when talking about her story. If she believed in fate, she might have pulled out some crappy line like “You don’t think that maybe this was the path in life you were meant to take”.

“If you hadn’t been a botanist…what else do you think you would have done?” though Harleen was hesitant about focusing on the past, and how this tragic event could have been different had she chosen another career, she felt the need to ask.

To her surprise, though, Pam looked up and away, and then breathed out, “I have no idea. I guess that would have been hard for me…to ignore my passion.”

After a little bit more of breaking the ice, and Pam finally speaking a bit more when asked questions about her closeness to plants and nature, ever since she had been a child, Harleen finally asked.

“It sounds like you chose the right path…how did the lab accident come about?”

Pam froze up again and then seemed reluctant to answer, but nonetheless, she explained, “I…was an idiot when I was in college. I had just finished up, and I had fallen for one of my professors while I was getting my doctorate.” She paused and scrunched up her face as she looked away…if Harleen wasn’t mistaken, she looked as though she might have been holding back tears since hearing the question again, “He uhm...he offered me an apprenticeship. I took it.” She paused again, and then looked up.

 Harleen’s heart sank as low as it could when she saw the look on Pamela’s face before she continued, “I had no idea what kind of man he was…they’ve all been so deceiving in my life…I wanted to believe he was a good man. That we were going to change the world together…” a quiet sniffle sounded the moment the door opened and the guard let himself out when he realized he had nothing to worry about between them.

“I guess now that I say it out loud, that promise does sound too good to be true.” Pamela said, trailing off. She appeared lost in thought, until she was brought back when Harleen adjusted slightly, “I’m sorry I’m taking a while to get to the point…I babble when they give me enough of that tranquilizing shit.”

Harleen laughed slightly, and gave a warm smile, “That’s completely fine. I’m glad you feel you can open up about this.”

The feeling in the room was heavy. It made Harleen feel as though she was one more sniffle away from crying herself. She hadn’t heard the entire story yet, but something about it, already, was making her empathize on a deep level with this woman with red hair strewn everywhere, despite the fact she had tried to pull it back into a hairband before coming in.

Pamela’s eyes and lips were swollen, she felt weaker than she had in years. It killed her to feel so vulnerable again.

“I’ve never talked about this with anyone.” She breathed, half to herself, reminding herself of this, “Not to any of the doctor’s before you…not even to the warden, even when he pretended to give a fuck.”

Somewhere in that statement, tears started streaming endlessly down her face. She gasped for air and wiped at her face furiously, “I hate that, why do they have to give me that shit before you talk to me, like I’m going to hurt you…” she rambled and ground her teeth together, “I hate crying in front of people.”

It seemed uncontrollable once she had begun. She bent her back, pushed her face into her hands and wept loudly and kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Without the coldness of a hospital psychiatrist, Harleen was known to be a little too sympathetic, though she never let herself feel as if that was a bad thing. It was part of being a psychiatrist, she thought as she stood, and let herself kneel beside Pamela, feeling the dirt and dust on the floor smudging against her tights, “It’s okay to cry in here. It’s okay.”

She hadn’t remembered grabbing a tissue as Pamela took it from her hand gently. When she spoke, it seemed to ease the crying only slightly.

“If you’ve never talked about this with anyone, I can’t blame you for crying…not that I ever will…but I’m sure this is difficult to talk about.”  When she reached over Pamela’s knees and held her hand, she couldn’t help it, though she knew she wasn’t to touch anyone in here, and they certainly weren’t supposed to touch her. But despite all of those very strict rules and guidelines for doctor/patient interaction in Arkham Asylum, Pamela curled her fingers tightly as she sniffled loudly into her other hand.

“I don’t think I can talk about this today.” Pamela whimpered quietly, shaking her head softly, “I’m sorry, I know I will have to at some point…but not today.”

“That’s okay.” Harleen whispered, rubbing her thumb firmly over Pamela’s knuckles as she tried to calm herself down, and slow her breathing.

Although she felt the need to ask if she would rather leave, she didn’t. Her hand was still being held so tightly, and the crying came in random bouts.

“Do you need anything?” asked Harleen quietly. When Pamela glanced down at her, she shook her head and murmured, “I’m okay, I just…need a minute. I’m really sorry.”

“That’s okay.” Harleen told her again. She wondered if she should ask the guards and nurses to lower whatever dosage they gave her, or forgo giving her any at all. But then she remembered, this was a breakthrough. Without any prior behavior like this in therapy sessions, during the two years she had been in this insutitution, this was definitely a breakthrough.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I might continue this, but I'm not sure. I've felt like writing this for a while. It's a story with the potential to make me cry a lot whilst writing. Oh, what fun!


End file.
